The Real Cost of WAR

I always think it is interesting how different spends of the same amount are seen differently when put in a different context.

I am finding that Work Area Recovery is more and more often moving over to the Facilities Managers SLA to the business. This means that Facilities Managers are being tasked with providing working environments for staff during normal operation and also during events where the normal office location is unavailable.

So I thought it would be interesting to see how much Work Area Recovery (WAR) would cost in relation to the Total Office Cost for a business, a figure that the Facilities Managers will be able to relate to.

The events that make the normal office unavailable in London range from the more mundane fires and floods to terrorism related cordons or ransomware lockdown. At these times clients of affected businesses will still need and expect the same level of service they always receive or will have to look to alternative suppliers.

This is when WAR becomes extremely valuable to the business, providing the infrastructure and resources to enable the business to continue as normal.

So how much does it cost to provide WAR in comparison to the Total Office Cost.

Using Lambert Smith Hampton’s Total Office Cost Survey 2017 (http://www.lsh.co.uk/tocs/key-findings) we can see that for most central London businesses the total cost of providing a workstation for staff is around £12,200 each, per year.

The general rule of thumb is that 10% of staff will need some form of work area recovery. This will provide for the Crisis Management Team and core business functions that need some security around their operations (Finance, HR, IT).

So for an office of 800 staff, costing £9.76M a year, the WAR requirement will be for 80 positions.

This would normally cost around £30,000 per annum or approximately 0.3% of the Total Office Cost. Clearly this is a very small amount to provide a replacement office at a highly critical moment and help save your business from financial impact, loss of market share or brand damage.